Conor was to create the presentation but was unable to for whatever reason, so Aidan ended up creating it and placing more information on the slides than I would have preferred, just to give Conor something to fall back on.

When we were rehearsing the presentation it became clear that Conor hadn’t learnt the speaker’s notes overly well and was having trouble recalling the necessary information. I had read over the presentation a few times and gave it a go, and it was easily possible to complete the presentation in under 6 minutes, it was simply a matter of knowing what was on the slide and then being ale to explain it.

Conor did improve as we practiced and seemed to be more comfortable with it when we left.

Their is great conspiracy surrounding the sinking of the Titanic. Some even incorporate urban legend to the ships sinking such as with the the curse of the mummy of the Priestess Ammon-Ra.The mummy was reportedly on board the ship concealed under the owner, journalist William Stead’s car as he believed they would not want the mummy on the ship.

Other theories would be from the likes of Robin Gardiner, who in his book, “Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank?”,concludes with that the ship that sank was actually the Titanic ’​s sister ship Olympic, disguised as Titanic,

Some believed that the Titanic was actually hit by a torpedo from a Norwegian submarine so that they could collect on the insurance policy. However, this has no evidence.

Slide 3

As we studied archetypes in our previous presentation, we decided to consider and try to incorporate what we learnt from Christopher Vogler’s, “The Writer’s Journey”, in the creation of the off screen narratives for our chosen characters. An example of this can be seen with the character of Molly Brown, who in the film can be seen as a type of Mentor as she helps jack (Hero) along the way. what we have done is turned her into a Shapeshifter in her own narrative as what is on the surface may not be all there is to her character.:

Molly has an infatuation with Cal and believes she and him should be together, so she appears as the mentor to jack so that she can get Rose out of the way.- This character was derived from the actress Kathy Bates’ performance of Annie Wilkes, from the film “Misery.”

Slide 4

We decided to make one of the conspiracies we have mentioned earlier into a sort of reality in the movie, and that is the theory is that the Titanic’s sinking was an insurance scam. Mr Ismay and Mr Thomas Andrews are in cahoots with each other in the created narrative, working together to help sink the ship. This has been going on since the making of the ship, as Mr Andrews deliberately makes the rudder too small to steer the ship. However in the end he breaks down at what he has done, killing so many. he never intended for all that to happen as he intended for their to be enough life boats.

Mr Ismay ensures thats the ship will be going too fast to manoeuvre around any obstacle in the way by convincing Captain Smith to light the last four boilers to pick up speed. He has a cover story as to why already in place so he would not be found out.

Slide 5

Captain Smith has a brain (undiagnosed) tumour which leads to him having severe headaches, nausea and impaired vision, all of which reduces his ability to safely Captain the ship and his judgement too.

Smith is hoping to retire at the end of the voyage, but the fact that the last ship he captained- the Olympic- had several collisions and caused White Star Line to be sued by the Navy is playing on his mind, also, he is reading Wreck of the Titan in his free time and the similarities between the fictional Titan and the very really Titanic is haunting, and there is also the pressure he is facing from Bruce to make it a voyage never to forget. At the end he goes down with the ship, as is the maritime tradition, with the ship and passengers being his responsibility.

Slide 6

For Lovejoy’s narrative we decided he is only really trying to protect Cal for his own self gain. During his time off-screen he reflects upon his time as a police officer, and a disturbing homicide case he worked, where the husband killed his unfaithful wife. By removing Jack, he aims to placate Cal and prevent him from snapping, which would reflect poorly on him as he would not have been able to fulfil his duty of protecting the man- even if it was from himself.

Cal from the beginning comes across as very dominant but in his off screen narrative we see just how dominant he can be. Even though he claims to love Rose, this doesn’t stop him from sleeping with other women on the ship, sexualising his character was inspired by the Christian Grey from the well loved book, now feature length film 50 Shades of Grey, but only in that he likes to be dominant.

Slide 7

For combining all of these characters narratives together we decided to use a schematic flow chart. This helps show where the characters pass by each other, when they are on and off screen. Each character’s off screen narrative is highlighted by a single colour so we can tell them apart.

We have also linked them in between where they meet on screen so we could see who is together at all times, and who we had to add a narrative to so their story wouldn’t just stop until the next scene, which ultimately made it easier for us.

(If they want to see schematic click link and zoom in once).

Slide 8

We have looked at different artefacts from the actual ship, such as pottery, the lifeboats, life jackets, and have further researched this to find other artistic interpretations such as Mary O’Malley’s pottery, where she has infused bits of broken pottery with barnacles and such to create the illusion that it has been underwater for a number of years.

We also looked into the actual iceberg itself and how ice melted so we could look at the icebergs journey across the Atlantic.

Slide 9

Examples of our initial ideation were creating the sinking scene of the titanic in sound so that the audience could experience the chaos and panic of the sinking, or creating an animatic of a secondary characters narrative.

Here we have experimented with a small titanic model that one of our team members created before the project. We shone a light from one side so that it would appear as moonlight and added in the lights of the ship, onto the ship and in the reflection in the “water”.

We have looked at the actual icebergs story; where it’s expected trajectory was to etc… perhaps even to make a character out of it. So we decided to do a time lapse of an iceberg to see its behaviour as it melts as a reference incase we were going to stick to using it as an animation artefact.

Slide 10

The inspiration for creating this steel imitation piece came from the image above, an example of a nameplate artefact that was retrieved from one of the Titanic’s lifeboats, but with a goal of making it look unrestored and aged.

The making of this piece involved some wood cutting and the metal was cut out with a grinder. The lettering was done simply with a stencil we made so it could be drawn onto the metal easily.

The painting is part of the one artefact as it symbolises the Irony in the quote “The ship of dreams…”

Rose is handcuffed to cal and cannot break away as she is part of that class. Jack reaches for her but they do not touch because of the class division. The image of the baby’s face represents the nightmare that actually happened instead of the “dream”, as the image of a child in this way is haunting.

After that, I came up this quick sketch of a possible sculpture we could make that would symbolise a lot of the events on the Titanic.

Obviously you have graves for all the dead, the ship breaking apart showing money soaked in blood as the class divides meant that a lot of people perished due to their lack of wealth (we saw in the film that the steerage passengers were locked in), and the frozen hand reaching out which could either be used to represent Jack and Rose reaching across the class divides to each other, or a hand reaching out to be saved.

Conor did this pretty interesting piece which messes with my head a bit.

Work In Progress

More ideas we had:

Make a miniature iceberg, put it in a tank overnight and record what happens (i.e) how it turns, floats and shrinks.

Make a life vest with sponge and cloth.

Acid tests on iron sheets

A waterlogged corpse (admittedly mine)

A 4D experience to recreate the sinking of the Titanic

Eventually we decided to make this lifeboat sign that Conor had found, and this was the end result.

Then when we were rehearsing the presentation with Conor, Aidan and I didn’t really feel it was enough, so whilst Conor was going over the presentation with Aidan again, I sketched out a few ideas for a painting.

Afterwards, we picked out on of the drawings to do and Conor, Aidan and I had Tasha take a picture for reference.

Reference image

I then drew an outline of the hands for Aidan to paint over.

This was the final image. I added the text in Photoshop but unfortunately, Aidan didn’t have time to actually paint the text onto the painting.

So the idea was to then pair the two pieces together, and the lifeboat sign would then border the painting at the bottom.

The image itself was to show how Rose was chained to a future she didn’t want and was trying to reach out to Jack. It intends to highlight the irony of the statement “The ship of dreams” as in reality it was much more the “the ship of nightmares”.

I just found this article particularly interesting. There’s other events that it talks about but the bit about the Titanic is what I was looking for.

“#5. Morgan Robertson Writes About the Titanic… 14 Years Early

A hundred years before James Cameron turned douchebaggery into an art form at the Oscars, American author Morgan Robertson wrote a sh***y book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about the sinking of an “unsinkable” ocean liner. When you see the cover, you figure you’re pretty clearly looking at a fictionalized version of the Titanic story.

No surprise there; it’s a story that’s been told over and over (there were 13 Titanic movies before Cameron’s, including one by the Nazis) but Robertson’s book was first.

Where it Gets Weird:

He was so eager to be first, apparently, that he didn’t bother to wait for the Titanic to actually sink before writing about it. The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was even finished being [cheaply] built.

The similarities between Robertson’s work and the Titanic disaster are so astounding that one has to imagine if White Star Line built Titanic to Robertson’s specs as a dare. The Titan was described as “the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men,” “equal to that of a first class hotel,” and, of course, “unsinkable”.

Both ships were British-owned steel vessels, both around 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, “around midnight.” Sound like enough to keep you up at night? Maybe that’s why Robertson republished the book in 1912 just in case enough people didn’t know that he wrote it.

And you thought this guy was an ass.

Where it Gets Even Weirder:

While the novel does bear some curious coincidences with the Titanic disaster, there are quite a few things that Robertson got flat wrong. For one, the Titanic did not crash into an iceberg “400 miles from Newfoundland” at 25 knots. It crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots.

Wait, what the f**k? That’s one hell of a lucky guess!

What 41.1 million square miles looks like.

But maybe the weirdest thing about Titan were points that had nothing to do with the story, but check out after numerous inquires and expeditions to the Titanic wreck site.

For one, both the Titan and the Titanic had too few lifeboats to accommodate every passenger on board; the Titan carrying “as few as the law allowed.” While Robertson decided to be generous and include four lifeboats more on his ship than Titanic, it’s an odd point to bring up when you consider that lifeboats had nothing to do with the f**king story. When Titan hit the iceberg (starboard bow, naturally), the ship sank immediately, making the point made about lifeboats inconsequential. Why the f**k mention this?!”